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Joanne Morris

started a topic
over 1 year ago

Upcoming Nectar Node Hypervisor Upgrades

What is being upgraded

All Nectar Nodes will be undertaking an upgrade of the Hypervisor used on Nectar Research Cloud in the upcoming months. Ubuntu linux is used as the hypervisor and it will be upgraded to Xenial release.

Why it is being upgraded?

The Xenial release of Ubuntu is needed to run the latest and future version of Openstack. It is important that the Nectar Research Cloud stay at current or recent releases of OpenStack to maintain access to support mechanisms from the OpenStack Community. Additionally each new release offers new features (for example Load Balance as a Service -LBaaS- has become available in a recent release) and usability improvements and stability.

When

We are planning to have this work done by September 1, 2017.

Impact to users

Normally most upgrades can be done without impact to the users but ocassionally (about every two years) we need to do an upgrade that requires rebooting all the servers in the cloud which will be required with this upgrade.
The upgrades at each of the Nectar nodes will result a period of service disruption (up to 2 hrs) at each node. Each node is implementing their own upgrade plan and schedule. Nodes will be sending out further detailed communication to their users prior to their upgrades so stay tuned.

Actions by Users

Ensure that your data backup processes are working so that in the unlikely event of data loss you will be able to recover. Nectar does not provide a backup service, it is your responsibility to maintain backups of any data or virtual environments created by you. Information on backup is available at:

Stand by for announcements from the node(s) that your allocation(s) are hosted on - they will provide more detail about the scheduling of the work and the impact on your VM’s. They will also provide guidance on what, if anything, you should do in preparation for the upgrade.